‘Titanium Noir‘ is a treat for anyone who likes their Speculative Fiction to be wrapped around a well-crafted mystery and told with style. I got as much pleasure from this as I did the first time I read Asimov’s ‘I, Robot‘ way back in the last century.

Our hero, Cal Sounder is a hard-boiled Gumshoe who uses the same kind of similes to describe the world that Philip Marlowe might have done if he’d been investigating a murder in a world where the truly wealthy had access to a drug that could extend their lives indefinitely and make them physically larger each time that they took it.

The story is told in a self-consciously Noir style that I enjoyed – think Raymond Chandler but replace the misogyny with dry, sometimes self-effacing humour. It was boldly done and rarely over-reached itself.

Cal Sounder’s Noirish style of commentary on his investigation into the death of a man that it shouldn’t have been possible to murder served to integrate a complicated and intriguing murder plot and a view of a future world that made the gap between the really rich and the rest even more impossible to close than it is today.

As a mystery, ‘Titanium Noir’ can hold its head high. The plot is layered and intricate and the disclosure is perfectly paced to keep Cal Sounder and the reader off-balance. I loved that, at the end of the story, everything made sense but left me shaking my head at how naive my understanding of what was going on had been for most of the story.

As a piece of Speculative Fiction, ‘Titanium Noir’ is timely, credible and thought-provoking. We already live in a world where, for the past fifteen years, billionaires have been growing richer while the rest of us have grown poorer and where some billionaires, especially in the tech sector in the USA, have marketed themselves as exceptional people who will shape all of our futures, whether we want them to or not. Nick Harkaway has extrapolated this trend and given us Titans as a physical manifestation of the gap between the rich and the rest.

He starts with three What Ifs:

• What if there was a drug, available only, from one source, that could extend human lifespans by centuries?
• What if repeated doses were needed, with a gap of several decades, to keep ageing at bay?
• What if each dose resulted in the recipient becoming larger and heavier until they were several times the size and weight of an undosed human?

From these What Ifs, he builds a world where people receiving the treatment become Titans, people so large and so physically powerful that they no longer seem human. He imagines access to the drug being controlled by one man, who believes the world can only sustain a few thousand Titans and who decides who those people should be.

Nick Harkaway animates this world by adding Cal Sounder, an undosed human P.I. with a personal connection to the leading Titan Family and has him investigate how and by whom a quiet, reclusive, Titan was murdered. As Sounder follows the breadcrumbs, the underbelly of the Titan world is exposed, the violence escalates and Sounder starts to understand that he is a pawn in a much bigger game.

I had a lot of fun with this book. I highly recommend it to mystery fans, Noir fans, Speculative Fiction fans and anyone who is looking for a well-told tale that entertains you while making you think about how the world works.

I recommend the audiobook version of ‘Titanium Noir’, narrated by Davis Brooks. He gives good Noir and never descends into pastiche. Click on the SoundCloud link below to hear a sample.